Jacques de Molay

Jacques de Molay, nineteenth-century color lithograph by Chevauchet

Jacques de Molay (est. 1244-5/1249-50 - 18 March 1314),[1] a minor Frankish noble, served as the 23rd, and officially last, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, and is probably the best known Templar besides the order's founder and first grand master, Hugues de Payns. He failed to successfully lead the Templars through the inquisitions made against them and was burnt at the stake on an island in the river Seine in Paris, Ile de la Cité, on 18 March 1314.

Let evil swiftly befall those who have wrongly condemned us - God will avenge us.

Before he died it is said that he cursed both King Phillip and Pope Clement V, summoning them before God, the Supreme Judge, before the year was over.

It is just that, in so terrible a day, and in the last moments of my life, I should discover all the iniquity of falsehood, and make the truth triumph. I declare, then, in the face of heaven and earth, and acknowledge, though to my eternal shame, that I have committed the greatest crimes but it has been the acknowledging of those which have been so foully charged on the order. I attest - and truth obliges me to attest - that it is innocent! I made the contrary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture, and to mollify those who made me endure them. I know the punishments which have been inflicted on all the knights who had the courage to revoke a similar confession; but the dreadful spectacle which is presented to me is not able to make me confirm one lie by another. The life offered me on such infamous terms I abandon without regret.

One of the foremost Templar scholars records of Jacques DeMolay's dying words.